Defending our values

There are many mountains to climb before the concept of a public defender scheme gets close to acceptability in the public psyche and in the view of criminal specialist lawyers.The term conjures up two main images from the US.

One is of the dedicated, but swamped, desperately overstretched and underpaid attorney battling against bureaucracy and scarce resources.The other is of the clapped-out and incompetent lawyer dozing off in court as his economically deprived client faces the death penalty.Against the backdrop of that perception, the government has been piloting the Public Defence Solicitors Office in Scotland and the Criminal Defence Service in England and Wales.Research in Scotland released this week shows clients are significantly less happy with the PDSO than with state-funded private practitioners.Criminal law specialist practitioners south of the border are already calling for the scheme to be abandoned.

It is probably too early to jettison the whole project - the first of the four-year English pilots only began in May - but with civil liberties at the forefront of so many minds, ministers should be aware that the right to a proper defence is one of the most crucial safeguards of all.